I took last Sunday off, if you hadn’t noticed. Thanksgiving and all of its celebrations and recovery were far more important than anything that could have happened at the farm that week, so I gave you all a week off as my gift to you. But. Today I am back with exciting news.
The &*(%!! building inspector has FINALLY signed off on our building permit. Only 11 months from when we had filed it. Don’t get me going on that topic. No we don’t have said permit in hand yet, now we are waiting for the selectboard to put their signatures on the permit, but as far as we are concerned, we are good to go and go we will! We may not be able to park our cars in it until June, but hey, as soon as it is enclosed and safe, the electrician will hook us up and I will have electricity in the bulb room. Meanwhile, an extension cord will have to do.
So here is a funny story. I was talking to a reader about white wedding flowers for early June. I couldn’t remember if I had ordered any white ranunculus and of course I couldn’t find any invoices or packing slips but I had the boxes sitting in the dirty room waiting for planting. What did I find in the first box I looked in? Tulips. Somehow 100 amazing parrot tulips never got planted back in October. Oops! And these tulips are amazing when they flower, so I planted half of them in the high tunnel, and half in a bulb crate to try out the new bulb room. Nothing ventured, nothing gained is my motto. And I do have 100 white ranunculus, as well as pink shades, pastel shades, picotee to plant in January.
The other warm day I started to prefill the bulb crates trying to find a system that will work before the big shipment arrives. I think I have it figured out but then all the best made plans do have a way of tweaking themselves.
If it is sunny and above freezing this will work. The first thing I had to do was get the pro mix thawed, so 4 bales are now in the dirty room and the least frozen got put in the crates. I filled each crate halfway using the bucket of the tractor as my work bench filling 24 crates and once I got going it only took about 2 hrs. The hardest part really was getting the frozen planting mix broken up small enough to use. So I have 23 crates ready to go, stacked in the tool shed and waiting for the big plant. One crate was used for the found tulip bulbs hence 23 remaining crates. This is going to work, I am sure of it.
My other exciting news is that I think most of the seed for the 2022 flower season has now been ordered and are being shipped. Yay! The end of December and January are going to be very busy with tulip planting, ranunculus, anemone and freesia planting, and then soon seeding of the cool flowers perennials and bi-annuals. I better enjoy the down-ish time of the next few weeks I guess. Sure, with Christmas, Boxing Day, New Years all happening too!
Until next week. Allie